


Small Crimes

by Inspire_me_to_breathe



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Arthur tells Eames he loves him, At Eames' wedding, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, In front of girlfriend Ariadne, Love Confessions, M/M, Motel, Unrequited Love, breaking up, no happy ending, slight homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inspire_me_to_breathe/pseuds/Inspire_me_to_breathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t play the victim, don’t you dare do that to me, Arthur.”</p><p>Five years. Five fucking years, and it comes down to this. An overcrowded bed in a darkened room. A wedding, ruined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Crimes

It’s a considerably small crime in the life of a criminal but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Ariadne can feel it. Can feel the hurt curled up inside her, heavy and deep like a guilt-ridden foetus, not breathing, suffocating in the layers upon layers of flesh and blood and bone. She wants to curl up herself, into a small ball, and block out the world for a while. But she can’t. Because the world is loud and it demands to be heard.

So she sits, perched on the edge of the bed with her shins drawn up to her body and her head bowed. Her hands are twisted in the sheets. The bed is lowered slightly on the other side under the weight of another human being, but she tries not to lean backwards towards the space. Tries not to reach for Arthur.

It’s become a habit. A bad one. In the five years they’ve been together as a couple, it’s become a habit. Too familiar and too fallible. Now all Ariadne wants is to fall back into the pattern; to reach, to touch, to lie, still, naked beside the other in motel beds and concrete alleyways as time gorges on their youth and spits back out the bones. She thinks that they’ve been falling for far too long. First into love, then, all of a sudden, out. Their bodies slip past each other like two comets floating through orbit.

It’s familiar.

And it hurts.

 “Arthur,” she dares to speak and the effort makes the word crack and tremble like a note held too long, like a gunshot fired a second too late.

The half-filtered light from the smeared glass panes attempts to cover up their shame, but Ariadne can see the dried blood curving like water down Arthur’s face. The tension holds his neck in place, hunched and sore, because he can’t look up, he can’t face her.

 “If you don’t look at me, how am I supposed to talk to you?” Ariadne whispers, shifts closer, feels the orbit pulling.

“Don’t bother,” Arthur suggests in a low, pained voice, “You don’t have to.”

Ariadne whimpers. Her chest is caving in. She forgets how to breathe.

“Arthur, God damn you,” She chokes, “Stop it. Just stop it.”

She slides closer and her hands search across the sheets between them for something solid to grasp onto. She entwines their fingers and for a second she is calm. But then Arthur exhales, slowly, sadly, as if he hadn’t wanted to. As if he had wanted to hold his breath forever.

“Don’t play the victim, don’t you dare do that to me, Arthur.”

Her vision is glazed around the edges and her eyes ache with the effort of not blinking.

Five years. Five _fucking_ years, and it comes down to this. An overcrowded bed in a darkened room. A wedding, ruined.

“You don’t get to do this,” Ariadne clenches his hand. It’s cold, and he doesn’t grip back, but he doesn’t pull away. “This is _not_ how it ends.”

“Let’s be realistic, Ari,” Arthur whispers in a lost voice, “There’s nothing left to end. It’s done. It’s over.” He pauses, his breathing is harsh and every heartbeat is a testament to God’s cruel irony, “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Ariadne growls, pulls her hand away, stalking away from the bed. She moves like an executioner, all stiff lines and aching purpose. She’s so beautiful like this, and Arthur watches her with dull eyes. She wants Arthur to know what he’s losing. All this passion, all this love. Wasted.

But Arthur won’t let her go and the orbit spins too close. He watches and she caves, like she always does. The pain is evident on his face, written in the melody of erratic breathing and sculptured on those hooded, haunted eyes. Arthur is a fearful masterpiece. Every brushstroke paints him darker, and every time she thinks she sees him, Ariadne takes another step back and discovers new intricacies.

So she steps forward, closes the space between them. She lowers her head until they’re level and she can look him straight in the eye.

“What were you _thinking_?” She asks, her voice barely breaking above a whisper. He knows what she’s referring to, but Arthur doesn’t reply. Instead he seems to implode, falling in on himself as if the foundations of his soul have collapsed and he can no longer support his body.

Ariadne wants to scream in frustration, but she doesn’t trust herself not to cry, “What were you thinking?” She repeats forcefully.

“I don’t know,” Arthur murmurs,

“You said it, in front of everyone, all the guests, our friends, in front of _him_ , you said-“

“I know what I said!” Arthur snarls, springing to life, “It was a mistake! It was a stupid fucking thing to do, and I ruined everything. I get that, okay? I am perfectly fucking aware that I fucked everything up-”

“Do you understand what ‘everything’ _actually is_ , Arthur?” Ariadne cries, “It’s _us_! It’s five fucking years and five fucking anniversaries and you don’t seem to understand, Arthur, that it’s _me_! You fucked me up.” She lowers her gaze, “You said you loved me.”

“I do.”

“But I’m not the only one,”

It’s not a question, she _knows_ , they all know.

Arthur had raised the wine glass in a toast. All eyes were on him and his hands were shaking so badly Ariadne had been afraid he would drop it.

He had bitten his lip, drawing sharp spots of blood, and the silence in the room increased because everyone was waiting for him to say something. Eames was smiling, one arm wrapped around the bride and another propping up his chin. He was expecting Arthur’s condescension. Perhaps some veiled insult, an allusion to past misdeeds. Ariadne had expected that, too.

Arthur had stared, eyes bright, trembling. A pained noise broke in his throat and Ariadne had panicked, starting to rise if he needed her. But Arthur spoke then. His voice had been so heavy with emotion it dropped to below a whisper and, in front of everyone, he’d murmured, “You shouldn’t have married her.”

Eames had frowned.

Arthur had shaken his head, his words catching on several false starts, and then, so quiet, almost incoherent, he confessed.

And then left the room.

It had been silent. Painfully so.

That awful moment, she will relive it every time she’s rejected. Every failed date. Every botched job. Every single fucking fatality and it will be _that_ moment she remembers.

That moment when you feel your world crumble into ashes, burnt by your own passion and your foolish, misplaced happiness.

She’d thought he was content.

She’d thought they’d been good together.

“I don’t-“ Arthur begins, but his voice falters and he can’t continue.

“You don’t what?” Ariadne spits out, “You don’t _love_ him? You don’t mean anything by it? It was a mistake? It was a lie?”

Arthur bows his head.

“You’re a fucking coward, Arthur!” She spins round, slams her hands into the drywall. It cracks, “You wait until his wedding day to say it, after years of fucking around with me.”

“I don’t regret us!” Arthur snaps, and Ariadne laughs, dry and bitterly.

“I do.”

He blinks, breaks a little more and then is remoulded sharper than before, “Then what the hell are you still doing here?”

“I can’t leave!” She turns on him, indignation burning in her eyes, “I can’t-“

Arthur watches her.

It’s all so wrong but there’s nothing more to be done. Sometimes you have to let things lie. And, maybe, after years have passed and people have faded, they’ll be covered up by dirt, layer upon layer, until the whole thing is buried deep and new things can grow from the mess they made.

“What’s wrong with us?” She says suddenly, furiously. “How did we end up like this?”

His head jerks upwards, “I didn’t _want_ this.” Arthur snaps, ignited by her spark, “I didn’t want to love him.”

Ariadne glares at him mournfully, “But you do! Even after everything we had, you still do!”

Arthur stares at her, pain flashing across his face, before he stands up abruptly and stumbles to the bathroom, slamming the door with shaking hands. There’s the sound of retching against porcelain before a few moments of silence. Ariadne waits, tense, and then hears a low, keening cry come echoing through the paper walls.

After Arthur had run, Eames had stood up, swaying slightly, and excused himself, pressing a reassuring kiss to his bride’s hand.

He’d followed him, and so did Ariadne. Arthur had been pacing outside, one hand lifting a cigarette to his lips to draw in the smoke. Eames didn’t say a word, just punched him, square in the face so that Arthur’s head had snapped backwards with the force, dropping the cigarette to the ground.

“You don’t say that at someone’s wedding, Arthur,” Eames had growled fiercely, his eyes blazing, “You don’t say _that_.”

They’d stood, glaring at the other, before Eames had turned on heel and Arthur had closed his eyes, accepting it, leaving Ariadne to try and mop up the blood.

And yet again, Ariadne finds herself having to be the one to drag Arthur up from the dirt. Sighing, she pushes open the bathroom door and enters the small room.

Arthur is waiting for her, propped up against the bathtub. The lino is cold against his exposed skin but he doesn’t notice. He’s trembling like a child caught up in a nightmare, but the upturned die promises that this is not a dream.

Ariadne approaches with caution and sits down next to him on the floor, prompting Arthur to draw himself up slowly in a kind of weary embarrassment.

“How did we end up like this?” She asks softly, resting her head on his shoulder. “I don’t remember it going wrong.” There’s a melancholy edge to her reflections.

Arthur whispers, “I do.”

“But you won’t tell me.”

The silence enforces her words and brings a heavy fatalism with them.

“I think the worst thing is that I believed you. Every time you held me, kissed me, I was certain that you loved me.” She delivers this with a self-deprecating smile to prove her naivety, “But now… What now?” She frowns, “What do I believe in? How do I know that it wasn’t Eames you were thinking of when you touched me? Every single kiss. Was it me or him?” She buries her face in the crook of his neck, presses herself closer to his warmth as is to re-enact a past scene in which she was more certain of herself, “I hope it was me. Because I _love_ you, Arthur. And now it hurts, so badly, to be told you don’t love me too.”

Arthur stokes her hair tentatively. He is biting his lip, eyes cast down like a child reprimanded.

“There were times when I suspected that there was… something between you and him,” Ariadne whispers desperately, “Because you looked too long, or laughed too loud or sat too close.”

“Close enough to get burnt,” Arthur laughs bitterly in muted agreement.

Dom had called him, several times, until Arthur had eventually picked up.

“What just happened?” Dom’s voice had been full of urgency, and Arthur, propped up against Ariadne in the back of a cab, had wearily ended the call.

Dom kept texting, all of his messages remaining unopened, before Arthur had crushed the phone underfoot and kicked the plastic remains into the road. He hadn’t the energy to deal with Dom then, but he had hoped the older man would not be offended. After all, Arthur wasn’t the only one with a dead romance.

Ariadne shifts against him, “I just hope it was worth it,” she breathes, “I hope you felt _something_ when you told him. I hope he was worth _me_.” Ariadne exhales shakily, brushing staining tears from her cheeks, and Arthur remains motionless.

“No,” He pauses, and then says again, stronger, “No.”

She smiles tearfully, “Well, I guess it’s too late now

Arthur nods numbly, “He hates me.”

And Ariadne can’t disagree.

“I just panicked when I saw him with her. It was horrible, like all those times I’ve watched him die before, all over again, all in white. I felt… I felt hopeless.” Arthur exhales, “I thought that, maybe if I said it out loud, if only he _knew-”_

“What good did you think it would do?” Ariadne frowns at him, “You shouldn’t have said it.”

“I couldn’t help hoping,” Arthur admits in a small voice as he curls even smaller, and Ariadne can do nothing more than gaze out at the silent morning light and try to cast her mind back to a time before the end.

For a while they sit together, until the floor becomes too hard and the light too bright. Then they dress silently and separately, and take different planes to different places to establish different lives.

And that’s it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos/comment if you liked!


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